


all the days spent by your light

by uptillthree



Category: Noli Me Tangere & Related Works - José Rizal
Genre: @ rizal be proud. ur sons r Gay, Canon Compliant, M/M, Romance, basagani and their library trysts, im not sorry about this at all, well mostly. technically.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 12:46:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11509725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uptillthree/pseuds/uptillthree
Summary: (In the library, in the tiny, private desk near the back that Basilio and Isagani have claimed as their own, the world feels smaller. Basilio can confront the jeweler Simoun at midnight and attend classes that wore him to the bone in the mornings and meet with the other scholars at noon— but the afternoons, the afternoons are his to keep. His to have, with Isagani.)Isagani looks up, tilts his head like a stray kitten on the street. "Doyoubelieve? That I— thatwe—will accomplish anything?"Basilio meets his eyes, and for a moment, all he can see is Crispin, young and hopeful and trusting. "I'd pity any person who wouldn't have faith in you."





	all the days spent by your light

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe this is my life now,,,, writing basagani fic..,,, rubs eyes. i hope i didnt fuck up w the Facts too much bc i haven't touched the actual noli/el fili books in years. i feel like i kinda kicked paulita's ass to the side in this and now i want to write paulita/juli to compensate,,, I Won't Apologize

Basilio first meets Isagani in the town library, when Basilio is agonizing over finals and Isagani is preparing for a class debate; Isagani asks Basilio quietly, "May I work here?" and Basilio, for lack of an excuse, agrees.

So Isagani sits across him and plans tomorrow's arguments. There are few words between them, the first time. It's peaceful. Basilio does not often encounter peace with other people. Before he leaves, Isagani gives him a handwritten pamphlet for the plans of a Castilian school, which Basilio tucks carefully in his pocket.

(Basilio sits at the same desk the next week, and is gratified when Isagani, without fail, without prompting, arrives.

And the next, and the next, and the next.)

(He catches himself waiting for the other boy.) 

* * *

Most people, from an outsider's eye, believe Isagani is a quiet person, if a little too poetic. They are wrong.

With _most_ people Isagani is quiet, yes, keeping his words and emotions to himself, but the months pass and the conversations between them stretch, and to Basilio, it is as though Isagani is blooming like the first flower in the spring.

He tells Basilio about his dreams of a future and his country's long history and how his studies have become significantly more interesting under the teachings of Father Fernandez, who, according to Isagani, is the fairest friar he has ever met. One long, unproductive afternoon in particular is spent by Isagani waxing poetic over Paulita Gomez, by the end of which Basilio is laughing at him and Isagani is still, indignantly, declaring her sweetness.

"Have _you_ never been in love?" Isagani says, breathless. "Surely there is someone!"

Basilio freezes. His mind takes him inevitably to dear Juli, in quiet, simple Tiani, to running hand in hand through the fields and eating 'Lo Selo's cooking together under candlelight, and it feels like a lifetime ago. 

Then, he looks up into Isagani's eyes, which are bright and present and passionate, and his mind, traitorously, takes him somewhere else.

_Oh._

"There is someone," Basilio says, voice hoarse, and Isagani grins and points an accusing finger and hoots with laughter.

* * *

Isagani, when unguarded and deep in thought, has a terrible habit of rolling his quill pen between his fingers. It makes barely a sound, but Basilio is distracted anyway, watching feathertip and nib twirl between finely-boned fingers and rough palm.

Basilio feels that quiet gaze on him, and that distracts him too. “What?”

“You’re always so—” Isagani shakes his head and looks away. Basilio so rarely sees him wordless.

“Always what?”

Isagani rests his fist on his chin and considers him. “Subdued. Even when you’re happy, it's as if you won’t let yourself be. It’s as if you’ve never let yourself be open to anyone in your life, anyone at all.”

“That’s not—”

And Basilio thinks of his first-last-best friend, the little brother he had promised he would protect, dying by the friar’s whip; Basilio remembers his mother, bloodless and breathless and cold as the damp earth beneath her.

And it isn’t fair, Basilio thinks selfishly, it isn’t fair that Isagani, kind and brave and bright-eyed Isagani, who makes friends with a single conversation and aces his exams simply because he _loves_ what he is studying, is the one to ask this of him—

“Sorry. You don’t have to say anything.” Isagani’s voice breaks through his thoughts. “It’s just— an observation, that’s all.”

Basilio doesn’t reply. He looks down at his notes, trying to return to his studies but understanding nothing.

* * *

Once, Isagani strides into the library with brisk steps and dumps his books beside Basilio loudly enough that the librarian shoots them a glare. (Isagani apologizes.)

“What’s the matter?” Basilio asks. “You look—” _Like the oncoming storm._ “—furious.”

“The civil guards at the doors questioned me,” Isagani says, as casually as though he’s just talking of the weather, and Basilio’s heart skips a beat.

“What? Why?”

(The last question is unnecessary— you could not walk, free and Filipino and educated, in this country and not be stopped at least once by the suspicious civil guards— but Basilio asks anyway.)

Isagani dares to roll his eyes. “They just asked for my identification. You know them. They’re looking for someone to get into trouble. Always. They say it’s just procedure, but _Sandoval_ never gets stopped like—”

A nerve twitches in Isagani’s cheek, and all his breath leaves his lungs in a furious rush. He clenches his fists, but it is too late: Basilio has noticed the faint tremors. When he speaks again, Basilio is only glad he has lowered his voice to a whisper.

(The strange, incredible thing about Isagani is that where others would be terrified, Isagani’s fear comes out as anger, fury, intelligence. Basilio is not at all like that, but he’s come to love the trait in Isagani anyway.)

“I hate it,” Isagani whispers. “You know that.”

“I do know.”

(Some evenings, after dusk comes and the library empties and the entire world falls away until there is only them, Isagani speaks and vows and whispers of rebellion. He says, _One day we will triumph over the rot in this country and begin again, as free men, and on that day every Filipino upon this land will begin with us._

Isagani whispers to him, _Basilio, I am not afraid,_ and by then Basilio is stricken speechless, but he listens.)

* * *

On an afternoon where the sky is dark with rain, the windows shut, the melting candle providing their only source of light, both of them drenched before they reach the library, Basilio tells Isagani about Crispin and his mother.

The thunder feels like a suitable backdrop for the words dragging themselves from his throat; the lightning, almost an insistence that he must continue. Basilio talks and talks and talks himself dry, but it isn't until Isagani reaches out and grips his hand that he starts to feel warmth again.

* * *

“You’re studying through the night?” Isagani takes in the books and notes spread out around him. There's an empty coffee cup and even a kettle. Isagani laughs in disbelief and shakes his half-empty jar of coffee beans at him. “Again?”

Basilio rolls his eyes and reaches for the jar. Isagani takes it and brings it up above his head, out of Basilio’s reach. Basilio scowls. Rolls his eyes. “Yes. Give that back.”

Instead of doing so, Isagani opens the jar and starts making Basilio a cup of coffee. “Bad for you. You already have bags under your eyes. Coffee is bad for the heart, Basilio, you should know that, you’re a _med student!”_

“Yes, I'm a medical student, and I have an exam tomorrow.”

Isagani huffs. “We’re both students and I don’t pull all-nighters half as much as you do. Though I _could.”_

Basilio levels him with a flat gaze. “I’m a year level higher than you,” he says, “and you’re not studying medicine.”

 _“What’s that supposed to mean?”_ (But they’re both already laughing.)

Isagani’s added too much cream, but Basilio takes a sip anyway. “You made it too sweet.”

“No, I didn’t. You just make it too bitter all the time.”

Basilio rolls his eyes again, but he doesn’t put down the cup even if it’s hot enough to burn his tongue.

(It is not often that he lets sweetness into his life.) 

* * *

In the library, in the tiny, private desk near the back that Basilio and Isagani have claimed as their own, the world feels smaller.

Basilio can confront the jeweler Simoun at midnight and attend classes that wore him to the bone in the mornings and meet with the other scholars about the Castilian school at noon— but the afternoons, the afternoons are his to keep, his to have with Isagani. In the afternoons, with his books and his studies and Isagani's quiet murmurs, the library is the only world he knows, and that is perfectly fine.

Today, Isagani is distracted. Basilio makes a game of stealing worried glances while Isagani fiddles with dog-eared pages, struggling to concentrate on his reading as Isagani looks at him, then looks away.

"Have you ever—" Isagani starts.

"What?"

Isagani considers him. "Nothing." Then, "I wondered—"

"What?"

"Just— I—"

It's almost painful, watching Isagani, normally so articulate, fumbling with speech like this. A smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, Basilio says, "If you want something, out with it."

Isagani leans forward on his elbows. The gesture is full of his usual bravado, but for all that, his gaze is shy. "I apologize. May I?"

"May you what—"

Isagani tilts his head forward and kisses him.

(Dumbly, Basilio's first thought is: _His lips are softer than they look.)_

Basilio, like the fool he is, opens himself up to the kiss like it is second nature. Isagani's hand comes up to cup his jaw, and Basilio's head abruptly catches up with his heart and tells it to pull itself together.

So Basilio pulls away. "Isagani—" (How could a person feel so breathless and alive at the same time?) "But I thought— Paulita—"

"Paulita," Isagani says as though brushing the word away. "I don't think Paulita returns my affections."

 _I didn't think_ you _did,_ Basilio thinks, stupidly. He's angry, somewhere, beneath the rush. "I'm not a _replacement_ for Paulita." He means it to come out as a pronouncement, a refusal— he just sounds betrayed.

Isagani looks horrified, his hand falling away from Basilio's face. "Is that what I'm doing?"

"Isn't it?"

Isagani falls silent. "I'm so sorry. I don't mean to. I... I spoke to Paulita a few days ago."

"And?"

"I told her about— this country, and what I want from Her, from our Motherland, and all I want to _give_ Her... She does not think I will accomplish anything. That is clear."

Basilio almost sighs. "All sweethearts fight, Isagani—"

Isagani's eyes are bright. "These dreams— dreams of a good future— aren't something I will ever wish to bargain with."

And Basilio looks at him and sees clearly, then, the kind of man Isagani is. A storm. He would die for love in a heartbeat; he would not expect love to do the same, but he would expect everyone to put their country first, to do the right thing, always. To Isagani, his fellowmen would always be at the forefront of his mind, his priority.

Basilio understood that, if only a little. Priorities, and the need to protect.

(Poor Paulita must have been swept away by him entirely.)

"I loved Paulita. Or perhaps I thought I did. Perhaps I still do. But— but she isn't what I _want."_

Basilio stares. "You've been courting her for nearly a year. Paulita is beautiful; she's kind, charming, she's fairly well-off—"

"I don't want a person who will not even have the faith or the trust to believe in me the one time I need it. I don't want a person who— who is empty air."

"Isagani," Basilio says softly.

Isagani looks up, tilts his head like a stray kitten on the street. "Do you believe? That I— that _we_ — will accomplish _anything?"_

Basilio meets his eyes, and for a moment, all he can see is Crispin, young and hopeful and trusting. "I'd pity any person who wouldn't have faith in you."

Isagani smiles. "Do you pity dear Paulita now, then?" he asks, and the air is thick with all the words they have not said; or perhaps that was just the smell of the books around them, dusty and falling apart and precious even so. 

Basilio licks his dry lips and says, "You're going to have to say it aloud, Isagani."

Surprisingly— or perhaps not at all— Isagani laughs, because of all things, at the height of emotion, words come easiest to a poet.

"I've come to realize slowly, as a fool," Isagani says, "that perhaps it is not at all Paulita Gomez, with her rich aunt and fear of dreams, that I want. Basilio, it is you. I want _you."_

And so Isagani presses his lips, gentle, to Basilio's, and here, in a world made up of only them, in the quietly flickering light of the candle, Basilio kisses him back.

**Author's Note:**

> yell at me @uptillthree on twitter and @julesdap on tumblr


End file.
